Watching gorillas in Rwanda

With its green hills, flourishing capital and mountain gorillas, this is a country fertile with emotional encounters, says Peter Browne Charles keeps a close eye on me as I crouch in the shadows of the forest. He squats just a few feet away, bulky shoulders hunched over against the early-morning drizzle, meticulously folding and refolding leaves with his enormous black-leather fingers. He seems utterly calm, completely at ease. But each time his deep-set, red-brown eyes meet mine, and he holds my gaze for just a moment, I feel a deep and slightly disconcerting connection between us, although we have only just met, here in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Charles is a magnificent silverback mountain gorilla. Most people will have heard of Rwanda for one reason: the massacre of 800,000 people over 100 days in 1994. The impact of that genocide, an attempt to eradicate an entire section of the Rwandan population, is inescapable. Communities were torn apart: neighbours turned on neighbours, families on families. All Rwandans have been directly affected by it; everyone over the age of 17 knows someone who died and probably has an idea who was responsible. When it ended, many of those with blood on their hands fled over the border to Uganda or Burundi or the Congo. Some of the leaders of the genocide were tracked down and put on trial in Arusha, Tanzania; many others have been tried at community courts in Rwanda.NEXT... Pictured: A juvenile mountain gorilla in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park

I am told people are now moving from Nairobi, Kenya, to take up jobs in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, and it doesn't surprise me. The city is developing fast and, judging by the number of new office buildings and shopping malls under construction, there is substantial investment money around. The main road through the centre of Kigali is grand and wide, with enormous roundabouts resplendent with monuments, fountains and gardens. It is also immaculately maintained: the government has decreed that the last Saturday of every month should be dedicated to community projects, when gangs of Rwandan citizens clean the streets, paint the verges and clip the hedges. Tourists don't spend much time in Kigali other than to pick up a souvenir at a craft market, or visit the Kigali Memorial Centre, the biggest genocide monument in the country, where there is a very moving, well-documented exhibition. One would have to be blind or emotionally void to come to Rwanda and remain immune to what happened here in 1994. But fortunately there is another reason why this tiny, landlocked and densely populated country is on the international map: the Virunga Mountains, which straddle Rwanda, the Congo and Uganda, are home to about half of the world's remaining mountain gorillas. Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park is where the American naturalist Dian Fossey began her research into mountain gorilla behaviour in the 1960s, and where she was murdered in 1985. Her book, Gorillas in the Mist, was made into a Hollywood film in 1988, starring Sigourney Weaver. Her research, interrupted by violence over the years, continues, and there are now 10 habituated mountain gorilla family groups on the Rwandan side of the border for tourists to visit. Permits to track them (and spend an hour in their company) cost US$500 per person and even at this price they are increasingly sought after. The great apes of the Rwandan forest have become a major tourist attraction and a lucrative source of income and employment for the government. NEXT...Pictured: Tracking gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park

I have never seen so many children. On the drive north from the capital of Kigali to the Volcanoes National Park, on new roads bankrolled by China and built by Chinese and Rwandan convicts, every woman we pass seems to have three or four children under 10; everywhere I look there are conga lines of tiny boys and girls in smart school uniforms walking at the side of the road. Kigali may be developing fast, but 90 per cent of Rwandans are still dependent on subsistence agriculture. It seems every scrap of land in this mountain nation is cultivated; terraced hillsides look in danger of collapsing under the weight of crops of cabbages, potatoes, sugarcane, sorghum, maize and beans. The red earth smells rich and ripe; through the drizzle and mist the landscape glows emerald. Have I ever seen anywhere so fecund and abundant? With its banana trees and tethered cattle and constant sway of human activity it reminds me of South India; its terraced mountains and hillsides recall Madagascar or Indonesia. The heavily forested Volcanoes National Park is dominated by the Virungas, a range of six extinct and three active volcanoes, the tallest being Karisimbi (4,507 metres) on the border with the Congo. The nearest town is Musanze, where there are backpacker hostels, lodges, basic restaurants and plenty of bars in brightly painted buildings advertising Primus, a local beer (others include urwagwa, a lethal homebrew made with bananas). Up here in the far north, the soil is volcanic black and fantastically fertile, but most of the buildings in Musanze and the nearby village of Kinoni are constructed with mud bricks made of red soil trucked in from the south. Corrugated-iron roofs have replaced the more traditional thatch in most places, although mud-and-eucalyptus structures are still common. On the approach to Kinoni we are pulled over by soldiers armed with AK47s. My guide, Gilles Simba, parks behind a truck overladen with bulging sacks of potatoes. From behind comes the rising swell of mournful singing and soon crowds of schoolchildren in crisp blue-and-white uniforms start streaming past, their voices clear and practiced, their footfall a synchronised drumbeat. Eventually we are waved on by the soldiers and drive slowly past a memorial where crowds are gathering for a remembrance service. Memorials like this have been built throughout the country, often at the site of mass graves; signs along the roads featuring a cupped-hands symbol urge Rwandans to learn from the past and strive for unity in the future.NEXT... Pictured: Virunga Safari Lodge

The base for my four-day gorilla-tracking safari is the Virunga Safari Lodge, about seven kilometres past Kinoni and 36 from the National Park. The location, on a peak between Lake Burera and Lake Ruhondo, magnificent inland seas untouched by tourism, is spellbinding. The five-kilometre road up to the lodge is badly rutted and the rain has caused mudslides; children appear as if from nowhere to wave and call out as we make slow but steady progress up the mountain. The road may be in poor condition, but it is an impressive feat of engineering, at times carved into the sheer mountainside. 'Welcome to the top of the world,' says David Magyezi, the lodge's general manager, as he greets me on arrival. The top of the world is a very civilised place with beautiful, landscaped grounds almost constantly enveloped in mist. The main lodge, with its bar, dining room and wide, wraparound verandahs, is built of stone like some fortified castle; from it there are commanding views of five of the national park's volcanoes, impertinent-looking peaks lined up in a grand procession. In the early morning, voices rise up from the hazy valleys below as villagers prepare to work their plots of land before the heat becomes too fierce. Up here on the top of the world, it is always cool and pleasant. My room is one of only eight self-contained bandas (cottages), with hand-carved wooden windows and private verandahs. With no electricity (there is solar power in the evenings), television or radio, and poor mobile-phone reception, it quickly becomes a calm sanctuary from the rest of the world. Everyone staying at the lodge (the average is two or three nights) is here to see the mountain gorillas, which adds a sense of shared purpose to dinner at the candle-lit, communal table. Most of the guests are American, the youngest a honeymoon couple from Texas, the eldest a wonderful woman in her late eighties from Florida. For all of us, this is a trip of a lifetime, for many the realisation of a lifelong dream.NEXT... Pictured: A cottage at the Virunga Safari Lodge

I am woken next morning at 5am with a pot of coffee; breakfast is served at 5.30; by 7am we have left the lodge for the Volcanoes National Park headquarters at the base of the Virunga mountains, where everyone with a gorilla-tracking permit has gathered for a briefing. This morning about 100 people of all ages shelter from the rain in a large pavilion on the lawn in front of park headquarters; I can hear Italian, Spanish and French voices, North American and Dutch accents. The choice is between an 'easy', 'medium' or 'difficult' trek to see the gorillas, depending where the family groups are located in the forest. An 'easy' trek, I am told, can take from 30 minutes to an hour, a 'difficult' trek usually three or four hours. It is still raining. I only have a permit for today and I don't want to spend half of it hiking through mud, so I opt for the easy route. There are villages and crops of potatoes and pyrethrum (a natural insect repellent, one of the country's few commercial crops) right up to the edge of the national park, which is demarcated with a dry-rock wall, over which we scramble. No more than eight adults are allowed in any one group; I have been teamed with a Canadian family of five and two young backpackers from Leeds. We start the sharp ascent into the forest, the path steep and slippery with mud and tangled with exposed roots, which in places form a natural staircase. Forty-five minutes later, breathless but enthusiastic, we catch up with three national-park trackers who have been up here since dawn keeping an eye on our quarry, the 13-strong Umubano family, led by the silverback gorilla, Charles. The forest is dark and dense and covered with stinging nettles; our guide and a tracker move ahead, slicing through the undergrowth with machetes, clearing the way for us. There is a strange, musky odour in the humid air. Our first sighting of Charles draws excited gasps and whispers. To our left, no more than two metres away, a female is nursing an infant male, three or more females are up a tree to the right; another male, a blackback, younger than the silverback but almost as big, appears in a clearing just ahead. They seem unconcerned by us, but our guide makes reassuring grunting noises to the silverback as we file past and crouch a respectful distance away. For an hour we watch and follow as the gorillas move through the forest to feed and shelter from the rain, the guide and tracker constantly clearing the vegetation so we can take photographs. These animals are extraordinary and compelling: their jet-black shaggy coats heavy and wet from the rain, feet like soft leather slippers, close-set eyes knowing and intent. As one female passes, she half-stands and beats her chest, King Kong-style. Chastised, we back off; she brushes past, an infant on her back, a flash of yellow teeth bared in warning. Our appointed hour passes too quickly and I long for another chance, uninterrupted by the photographic frenzy and excited chatter of the other tourists, just to sit quietly and observe. Dian Fossey wrote of the transformative experience of being accepted by these rare and exquisite beasts, genetically 97.7 per cent identical to humans, and after just an hour in their company I can begin to appreciate what she meant. Early the next morning, we go tracking endangered golden monkeys, curious relatives of East Africa's more common blue monkey but with russet coats and black limbs. As with the mountain gorillas, we spend an hour in their company, a habituated family of 20 or more, as they swing and leap and chatter high above our heads. Back at the lodge in the late afternoon, plans for a guided walk to one of the lakes are shelved by an incredible thunderstorm, with sheets of rain lashing the windows of mybandafor four hours or more. I watch from the veranda, in awe of the storm's ferocity, until the rain slows to a steady pace and the sun comes out, fracturing a multitude of fresh-water puddles with light.NEXT... Pictured: Mountain gorillas feeling the cold in Volcanoes National Park

On my fourth and final day in Rwanda I have arranged to meet a friend at the Kigali Memorial Centre. On the drive back to the capital, Simba stops to buy eggs from the side of the road, packaged in neat banana-skin parcels, and we call in at a truck stop for a snack of barbequed beef skewers and potatoes. There are a quarter of a million genocide victims buried in the terraced grounds surrounding the stark, angular Kigali Memorial Centre, set high on a hill for all to see. The centre opened in 2004, the 10th anniversary of the genocide; in the first week, more than 1,500 survivors visited it every day. Since then it has found its way onto most international visitors' itineraries, and with good reason: it is both brilliantly conceived and documented and deeply affecting. The centre is surrounded by gardens, each one freighted with symbolism: an audio guide explains the significance of the elephant sculptures (never forget what happened) and the clay monkey on a mobile phone (tell the outside world what is happening). Inside, the exhibition attempts to put the genocide in context by highlighting the role of the Belgian colonial powers in promoting ethnic differences and creating a ruling elite; the passive complicity of France in the build-up to the slaughter; the tragic indifference of the United Nations. Behind glass in the last, dimly lit exhibition room are the pitiful, blood-stained clothes of victims, spot-lit like religious relics. My friend and I decide to have lunch at the Hotel des Mille Collines before my flight back to London (the hotel takes its name from the fact that Rwanda is known as 'pays des mille collines', or 'country of a thousand hills'). I have read in Paul Rusesabagina's book An Ordinary Man, the true story behind the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda, that the tables around the hotel's swimming pool were the place to do business in Kigali before the genocide. The book describes events during those 100 days in terrifying detail, how Rusesabagina managed to save 1,200 lives at the Hotel des Mille Collines, where he was general manager, and how those holed up at the hotel drank the swimming-pool water to survive. Today, the hotel is bright and shiny after a refurbishment and the views over Kigali from the swimming pool are of a rapidly evolving capital, buoyant with promise. A quick glance around the other tables, busy with businessmen and military chiefs, aid organisation groups and charity officials, confirms that the Hotel des Mille Collines is once again a popular meeting spot. There is hope in the air, and I allow myself a moment of optimism for the future of Rwanda and its most prized asset, the world's last-remaining mountain gorillas living in quiet contentment in the shadows of the Virunga volcanoes.

GETTING THERE

The writer's trip was booked with Original Travel (020 7978 7333; www.originaltravel.co.uk). A four-day gorilla safari in Rwanda with Volcanoes Safaris (0870 870 8480; www.volcanoessafaris.com) costs from £2,700 per person. The price includes three nights at Virunga Safari Lodge (full board), transfers from and to Kigali airport and one gorilla-tracking permit. An additional permit (recommended) costs US$500 per person. The company arranges flights with Kenya Airways via Nairobi, from about £800 per person, depending on the time of year.

Pictured: A garden at the Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda's largest genocide monument Published in Condé Nast Traveller February 2012